


if only our world

by darling



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21962041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darling/pseuds/darling
Summary: meeting and parting. parting and meeting. how do you feel?
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	if only our world

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. someday i'll write a real bf fic that's not character study/ About How They Love Each Other study...  
> 2\. both poems are poems found in the game of karuta which uses the poems from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu  
> 3\. thanks for reading. i made the mistake???? of rereading it and then finally watching it. so now i need...yeah. send help.

> **[** In this world of ours, There is no 
> 
> way to float above pain. Even lost 
> 
> in thought in the depths of the 
> 
> mountains, I hear the deer crying. **]**
> 
> _ fujiwara no shunzei _

  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


everyone and no one knows ash lynx. for years, this is life as the world understands it.

then eiji okumura happens.

and the world, suddenly, improbably, unforgettably, terribly, beautifully --

\-- changes.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


at least, for a while.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


it replays in ash's mind many times, this --

\-- eiji's exhale before the run-up, the grip of his hands on a tool that would betray him as soon as serve its purpose, the almost argumentative dig of the pipe into the obstinate gravel at the foot of the wall, and oh how like certain words and types of weather and summer birds the way eiji's body remembered what it needed to: how to be strong, how to lift and torque and arc like some kind of art what might be found in a museum if a museum could contain such a thing.

he doesn't altogether understand. he never has enough time to be permitted to fully understand things like this -- feelings, that is, things that in another life might have been the biggest of his worries.

a boy he likes.

a boy who, against ash's own best intentions to never let himself have things, insists there are reasons to like himself.

it replays.

ash wonders when he last noticed that the sky was blue like summer behind the vaulting of eiji's body and eiji's bravery and eiji's absolute and beautiful unknowingness for the words he spoke and what they meant to ash; what they mean to him.

'if we're going to die anyway, i'm going to die trying.'

it replays.

breaking ground. open-armed sky. eiji.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


they say that the only way to make something truly and irrefutably tragic is to make it achingly beautiful and idyllic at the beginning.

ash of all people knows this is an untruth. 

there's maybe nothing in his whole life that would be described as idyllic. 

though there is some beauty.

he wonders what kind of messed up person he is that he can't help but see it in the city of thieves new york is.

seeing beauty in other places is less questionable.

to his left, eiji slurps with unexpected volume from the super-size coke that has two straws even though they've only really been using the one. to his left, eiji sits like the boy of summer he is to ash -- legs bent like a child, head bent like trust, the barely-there glancing color of cape cod's sun across his face despite the tree they're under, the bracelet that matches the one on ash's wrist some kind of kindness ash is both uncomfortable with and overwhelmed by. 

when eiji glances up at him through straight dark eyelashes, a question transparently on the tip of his tongue, ash smiles and gets up to go dive into the river before he finds out what eiji might say with such a look on his face.

something he doesn't deserve, ash is sure.

but eiji's charm is the way he disarms even invisible things and, after messing around in the river for too long, lying in the grass, he's on the edge of dozing when he says to ash quiet warm and open sky:

"what a nice day."

means: with you.

with you.

with you.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


ash doesn't ask eiji for forever but eiji offers it anyway and ash doesn't know if the fact that he knows he means it is what hurts the most or the fact that he knows he should wish he did not mean it...and he can't.

isn't strong enough to refuse. 

so dangerous, ash lynx. to yourself. to others.

he can hear it.

sometimes it's his own voice. sometimes, others. sometimes just the discordant space where words should go and shattering noises lay themselves down by the thousand. sometimes.

eiji offers forever.

and for once, when he feels a body curl over his, ash cries a little harder because somehow, somehow?

he is not afraid.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


ash dreams of a golden field. the sky seems golden too. 

eiji is there.

and it's beautiful.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


in a different life, maybe eiji was always in new york. or maybe ash never was in new york. or maybe new york doesn't even exist. maybe in another life they are space travelers finding a new home together. maybe in another life ash is the earth and eiji is the sky and they're somehow like they are now: always and never together. touching but not. here and nowhere. oh maybe. 

but this is the life they are in now, this with eiji asleep in a way ash never wants to see again, eiji who keeps getting hurt but should never be hurt.

(' _ you are hurt too, ash. you are very hurt.' eiji says once and ash cannot understand it. another thing ash does not understand: how once eiji takes his hands gently gently gently and somehow ash knows if eiji didn't respect the reality of ash he would kiss him but he doesn't, doesn't do that, only holds his hands like he's worth something and insists in that wry soft voice, 'you are human too. _ ')

he wants to tell him he's sorry. he has the thought that even in sleep, even in discomfort, eiji carries a soothing aura and ash isn't stupid; won't ignore the possibility that it's just him who thinks so and yet he knows that's not the case. shorter comes to mind and then ash has to banish that thought even as he falls to his knees at the bedside and promises a promise he'll keep or die trying.

once, eiji flew. ash saw it himself; felt it in his heart: wings that did not need to belong to him to lift him.

it was seconds.

it was forever.

he reaches out a hand then pulls back. if eiji was awake, he almost certainly would reach for him too. 

and it's a thought that is both comforting and damning all at once.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


where eiji one day thinks that sayonara is a word he never should have taught ash, ash thinks how fitting it is. 

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


everyone and no one knows ash lynx. for years, this is life as the world understands it.

then eiji okumura happens; eiji okumura gets to know him.

and when ash lynx sleeps for the last time, eiji okumura keeps trying to know him: through photographs, through memories, through letters in his head, through dreams, through making other people look at the photos just to prove aslan callenreese is real.

'was', some uninvited voice says but eiji will not have it.

for all the times ash watched eiji sleep, eiji did the same. for all the times ash worried about eiji, eiji did the same. he knows he cannot tell the world the whole story. it is not his story to tell.

but sometimes someone writes something beautiful about the photograph labeled 'dawn' and eiji cannot help but cry because even though it's only a small understanding, it is still understanding. for every part of ash that ash refused to his face, eiji makes them real: his youth in the face of things that all but stole it, his charisma not born of anything crafted but simply possessed, and something beautiful as much in the curve of the incoming morning as the clarity of his eyes. 

there are parts of the world that can never forget ash lynx even if they might want to. eiji can name them and even guess at their whereabouts but it doesn't really matter where they are so much as that they wake up every day and remember. and eiji isn't a masochist or a sadist or anything like it; he just wants the truth.

ash lived; ash lives.

because that's how it is when you don't let yourself forget.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


some photos, eiji keeps to himself. 

he is only human.

"maybe," he says to the mess of things left, "this is just 'for now'?"

many nights, eiji has nightmares. but sometimes, especially nights when he lets himself have quiet councils like this, he has a dream instead.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
  


there: a field of gold. there: a sky gold and silver-white. there: a boy stolen by the city's mistakes only to be made to wait for seconds forever for too long too long too long.

eiji dreams a simple dream --

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


\-- the dream in which they do not have to wait anymore. 

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


in a field of gold under a sky whose setting sun means hope not fear, fate inside a heartbeat, two boys lay with their hands folded and fingers interlaced. one angles closer, or perhaps the other does, or perhaps both; it is probably both. they do not need to be so close; they do need to be so. and close. and oh they are. it cannot be helped.

they do not need help.

"how do you feel?" eiji asks and even in this place, even in this forever, asks with his hesitant hand if with his free hand he can reach, if he can touch, if he can push back ash's clean blond hair out of his eyes to see them better. when ash blinks in permission, eiji does so, and when ash gives further permission by closing his eyes as if to revel in eiji's nearness, eiji continues like this: the soft carding of his fingers through ash's hair like he loves him.

because he loves him.

how does he feel?

it takes ash a long time to answer. in this place, who can say?

the gold of the field never wanes and perhaps they have missed the moon and the sun for each other.

however many times.

how does he feel?

the word as once a bird whose wings were broken quite young. 

but when eiji lets go of his hand just to frame his face with both, then to carefully draw them to rest over where a heart is strong no matter what the bearer says, ash feels it.

the feeling. and the knowing of it.

and it's funny, isn't it. 

he's seen eiji as a bird all this time.

it makes sense.

eiji opens his palms like a flower and ash says, "can i?"

the word ash kisses against eiji's mouth makes eiji cry.

the field is gold.

how does he feel?

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


" _happy_."

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
  


> **[** If only our world--
> 
> Could be always as it is!--
> 
> How moving the sight
> 
> Of the little fishing boat
> 
> Drawn by ropes along the bank.  **]**
> 
> _ kamakura no udaijin _


End file.
